The beast came to trade to claim to profit. To herd, to harvest, to separate, to prophet. It sought to consume the universe, but found it too big for its jaws.
So, it grew another head. And then another.
Until it had so many faces
His back ached. It always did, really, he recognized peripherally. But this wound was fresh. It still throbbed in irregular streaks of agony painted sideways across his person.
Why are you alive? Why even get out of bed in the morning? What's the point?
He lifted himself from the ground, or close to it, his hands still gripping the coffee and the soil he had clutched when the pain brought him low.
Let's face it, the world is a karking disaster.
And he looked up from where his gaze had fallen, at the silhouettes that stood all around him, and the sun or the moon – that orb-- that had risen into the sky, cresting the path to elsewhere, sucking their attention from the minutia and limited scope of their individual lives.
Every time you pick up your holophone, or turn on the holotube, it's news of some war, or some other impending nightmare. People losing rights.
[ŴΔҜ€ ỮР. ŦĦ€ ǤΔΜ€ ΞŞ ŞŦΞŁŁ ΞŇ РŁΔ¥]
Wake the kark up.
The sphere had turned indigo. And everyone was screaming.
But not in terror.
The transition from noise to silence came with swapped characters, crashing down around him with all the texture and thunder of its obvious lack thereof – The stillness was a giant radioactive monster that had just placed its massive reptilian foot through the center of his apartment, and, for a moment, Zo feared to open his eyes. He lay there on his couch, awake behind closed lids, awaiting something to present itself to warrant his being afraid.
You know how you got here. You're born, you grow up, you get old, you die. Big Empire tells you start a family. Get a job. Buy a house. Buy a speeder. Pick up a hobby. Go to work. Go to work. Go to work.
...until he remembered there was no reason to be. Just the diatribe of public access holovision, its insights that of any Punk or Hip Hop track published before 1995.
What do you do when you've ticked off all the boxes and found you were just as empty as when you began – In the exact same space, like a rat on a wheel?
But nothing Zo had not heard a thousand times before.
It had only been a dream.
The disappointing fact is that this is good enough for some people, and they'll live their lives without ever questioning it. Big Empire may even destroy whole worlds just to facilitate their meaningless lifestyle, and they will never even bat a karking eyelash.
Amidst the creaks and farts of synthetic leather, Zo sat up from his makeshift bed, settling into the confusing reality of his waking life as tier after tier of meaning and purpose and context slowly dawned upon him. He eyed the holovision, its speaker a Rodian with piercings in his face that would have seemed arbitrary in their placing had Zo not had tattoo apprenticeship, way back when. While they now made sense to him culturally, he would be damned if he could give the street name for such body modification. What wasn't adding up, however, was his most recent nap, and Zo struggled to make sense against all the sensory signs as to the current time of day and the noticeable
lack of noise from his electronic alarm…
They will never accomplish anything.
This is a pathetic excuse for living, and an even sadder excuse for dying.
If you do not develop your own purpose for existance, you will only ever become the lengthened shadow of Empire. You will only ever perpetuate the turning of a machine that has done nothing but to enslave and jail you.
Zo inspected his holoclock. Sporting a sleeker design of a modern product, it had barely been in Zo's possession for three months, despite the device's decades of obsolescence. However, while he distinctly remembered setting it a week ago (a repeat of the actions a week prior, due to the now regularity of this malfunction), the digital screen bore no indicator that it had been tasked with any sort of wake-up call at all. This was all very frustrating, the holoclock too young and without wear to behave as though it was broken; as though the clock's manufacturers had not attached a steeper cost for this vintage tech in the promise of being disconnected from the Holonet of Things for those who wanted out of such iLife.
A default life. A robotic life. The life of a clone or a hologram.
But a purpose requires a lot of hard work, and surprise, people are lazy.
A price Zo had paid, he thought. He fumbled with the beautiful design with growing irritation. Its corners had been rounded to give it a friendlier appearance, dressed in a matte white polish to the point of shine. He fingertips struggled against computer-drafted, laser cut parts, perfectly assembled to be devoid of any linework or seam. It would be a peerless piece of art, it presented, had it not been produced with
countless peers in a factory somewhere, feigning innocence despite this having been the second time it had opted to drop its programming without cause. Instead, it blinked at him in its soft pink numbers, their assembled order one that communicated dire news indeed:
He was over two hours late for work.
We at the Rosewater Center feel everyone has a unique purpose, and we seek to help you discover it and work toward it. To bring it into reality.
There is something missing from the galaxy and you know exactly what it is.
This struck something in Zo, and he looked back to the Rodian on the screen for further clarification, though there wasn't any; he was already gone. Instead, a local ad for used holospeeders –a trash jingle that would pop into his head, but never well enough that he actually remembered the name of the company. He set down his clock and stepped toward the wall, already decorated in prior musings and graffiti. Lines of resonance, future poetry – And in a piece of coal, he added to the work.
There was something missing in the galaxy.
There's a hole in everything.
District 9 - The Sty
"ZO-LA!," the voice came from beneath the neon, joined by a chorus of two more harmonized voices as Zo made it down the steps to his apartment.
"ZO-LA, ZO-LA!" The heckling had a musical quality to it and Zo grinned despite himself, peering through the fluoro-haze in search of his callers.
Jix, Mox, and Kando – three neighborhood kids turned Zerø -- huffing whatever it was this week. Zo nodded his head up at them, exaggerated,
"Yooo, what's up." Kando threw a sorta high wave mixed with some other hand gesture in acknowledgement, perhaps confusion. Jix (trying to impress the de facto leader, Mox) answered for all of them,
"We good," continuing as Zo made his way to his hover-scooter, undoing the lock.
"That do any tricks?" He laughed louder than he should have – a primal display, triggering the other two to do the same.
Zo readjusted his backpack, stepping aboard the little vehicle with a single foot. Glancing back at the crew,
"Yeah, you clown it, but you're the one walkin'."
He sped off, barely able to hear the disgruntled retort,
"Man, ain't nobody wanna steal that chit!"
The trio sat there a few beats.
"Yoo," Mox snickered. Jix and Kando glanced over at him.
"He's kinda right, tho."
Jix deflated.
They could not possibly be less aware of the evictions.
